Friday, June 21, 2013

Thursday, June 20, 2013

I will let you know as soon as I manage to pick up the catalog of this upcoming Italian exhibition. I will also review it when I get it. In any case, I thought that European readers of the blog needed to be aware of this event.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

I just got from Disney's Press Department those two photos which appear in the members-only section of the D23 site. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Captions:

[Top: This never-before-released photo, taken with Walt’s personal camera, show Walt and his family visited Denmark in June 1951, where this photograph was taken. From the “D’scovered” feature exclusively on D23.com.

Bottom: This never-before-released photo, taken with Walt’s personal camera, show Walt sleeping in the shade on the lawn of his Woking Way home on a state-of-the-art '40-s cushion—a book at his side. From the “D’scovered” feature exclusively on D23.com.]

Ah, the joy of seeing a really GREAT Disney book being released! From my point of view, the upcoming Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse: Color Sundays Vol. 1 "Call Of The Wild", edited by David Gerstein, is not just a "must have", it is also one of the very best "Disney History" books released in Fantagraphics outstanding series and almost certainly the best Disney History book of the year.

To start with, there is the sheer pleasure of seeing Gottfredson's Sunday pages collected in English for the first time. Then there is the tremendous amount of bonus material, including a reprint of the five DeMolay comic strips, long a frustrating mystery for Disney scholars.

My advice: pre-order this volume and the next one right away. I am not often this enthusiastic, but in this specific case, I am certain that, if you read this blog, you will not regret it.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

You may have heard this already: D23 relaunched their website yesterday. I have just checked out the members-only section and lto say that I was excited by what I saw would be a complete understatement.

If you are reading this blog, you have to become a member right away.

Here is an email I just received from Becky Cline, Director of the Archives:

[We found photos of Diane, Sharon and even Roy on the Griffith Park
Merry-Go-Round recently … some of them were posted on our re-launched
D23 website today! We found an amazing cache of photos recently and we
will be rolling out the best of them in the next few weeks on our site
and in the magazine! We posted them today in a column we are calling
"D'scovered" where we will be constantly sharing new finds as we come
across them. :)]

As soon as you become a member, jump to the following three sections:

- D'scovered
- Lost Adventures
- Weird Disney

There is some truly spectacular new photos and documents in these sections.

And also check out the new episode of Armchair Archivists which contains especially one great surprise connected to Disneyland.

I never thought I would get this excited about D23 but they are really moving in the right direction now as far as I am concerned and are definitely worth supporting.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

While in Los Angeles two weeks ago, I discovered that there were actually two catalogs on the Japanese Mary Blair exhibition. The one above contains more of Mary's non-Disney art and is unfortunately almost impossible to find.

Monday, June 10, 2013

I was really excited to receive a few days ago this book by Are Myklebust and Jan Ståle Engaas. Granted it is written in Norwegian and I can't read it, but the amount of new pre-War Disneyana material which it contains and which I had never seen makes it worth having it, in my eyes. I am also extremely happy to see the history of Disney in Norway documented for the first time in a serious manner.

My only wish now is to see other Disney historians tackle the same type of project for the other Nordic countries: Sweden, Denmark and Finland.

By the end of the summer Are will send me some information about how to order the book.

Wednesday, June 05, 2013

Tuesday, June 04, 2013

William Ward was one of the English artists who produced Disney comics for the Mickey Mouse Weekly in the late '30s. The stories he wrote and illustrated are among the most bizarre when it comes to featuring Disney characters. All of his Disney stories are now collected in a beautiful book which will be released next month in Italy. Unfortunately it is in Italian, but I know that the most serious Disney comics fans among you will want to pick it up.